First the good news …

Some of our gaping potholes are getting fixed.

The bad news is that after years of neglect this is not being done as a public service. 

A summit meeting of heads of state and government is coming soon. Our owners, to borrow from satirist Muckraker, don’t want visitors to see the ghastly streetscape.

Our owners have handed over 100 top-of-the range 4×4 ‘utility vehicles’ to tribal chiefs in rural districts to guarantee their continued political support.

A drought looms and hundreds have died in a cholera outbreak caused by inadequate sanitation and clean water. One of the cars could have paid for ten rural water wells and scores of repairs to broken sewers in towns.

The local currency to the American dollar plunges to new lows every day (18,000 to one yesterday from 6,000-1 a few short weeks ago.)  Because there simply isn’t enough money around to buy it, food goes beyond it’s ‘best before’ date in the shops. 

The cheapest plonk from Down South has gone up from the equivalent of US$ 5 a bottle to US$ 12.  Not only will the summit delegates have a smooth ride but they will wine and dine sumptuously. No cheap plonk for them.

      A beggar pleads:  I haven’t eaten for two days. He had lost his job when a factory not far away went broke.

      He wouldn’t get much joy from our owners in their ivory towers, mansions and big cars. Those in a comfy, air-conditioned Mercedes Benz never wind down their windows for beggars.

      He doesn’t bother to approach a fat lady coming out of the supermarket with two trolleys laden with imported luxuries and the best Scotch whisky.

     He knows he’ll get short shrift from her. He comes over to my pothole-shocked jalopy.

Our daily traffic jungle is dominated by hours of  jams, bad tempers, dangerous speeding, unroadworthy vehicles, unlicensed drivers, illegal taxis, blind overtaking, all of it without any regard for rules of the road, red lights, lane discipline, stuff like that.

And what about our driving school that offers to teach learners ‘extras’?  How to skirt road blocks, bribe police and license people, how to refine excuses for motoring infractions. Hurrying to mother’s health emergency, no power, traffic lights (known in southern Africa as robots) not working, not my fault, the other one in the  crash was texting on the move, blah, blah, blah.

That’s life and there ain’t much I can do about it.